Thursday, December 10, 2009

The children from a local day care are paying their weekly visit to the library this morning and amidst the clatter and din, I heard their teacher shout, "No, Noah! No!"And in response, Noah, who was clearly up to something, wailed, "But I just want to be aloooooone!"Sigh. Me too, kid. Me too.

Funny, I was labeled as an anti-social when I was in pre-school because at playtime I would pick a couple of toys and hide in the cloakroom so that I could play in peace.

I guess nothing has really changed all that much since then. In my defence, I'm not really anti-social, I'm just a loner who isn't very good at dealing with people. Really, I mean them no harm, I just don't want to put up with people's crap.

Stuart(and Noah) may have the same thing I do, I didn't get a correct diagnosis until I was 20. Asbergers(I'm a mild case). Not so much a disease as just having a brain that's wired a bit differently(often goes hand in hand with high intelligence too). Think of it as the brain wiring much of the social/body language recognition parts of the brain over to logic and pattern recognition instead(I had to LEARN reading bodylanguage and all but the most basic facial expressions. Didn't come natural).

A bit of a giveaway in such kids is that they're often very touch sensetive and prone to react violently to unwanted touching, teasing(inevitable, kids "smell" difference) and feeling wronged.

Took me until my teens to get that fully under control... martial arts helped. Now I've got my temper under stricter control than most people. Though I know from experience(from my childhood) that if I do lose it, I go berserk(though a focused and calculating berserk), my fury actually triggers the same internal drugcocktail mix as intense danger and/or bodily harm. Enough adrenalin, testosterone, etc to have me litterally seeing red a couple of times. I even had a reputation back in elementary school for not feeling pain(in fights).